Review: Vivian Maier at the Musée du Luxembourg

Article by Laura Mittelman

Upon entering her exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg, I was immediately pulled into the marvelous world of Vivian Maier. At first, her story and rise to fame shocked me, as I was in disbelief that such a talented artist kept all her photos to herself. Before moving to Chicago to spend most of her life working as a caregiver, she traveled between the United States and Europe. She endlessly roamed the streets of New York City as she practiced her craft of street photography. She would take photos for 40 more years, telling intimate stories through the authentic lives and raw emotions captured in her over 100,000 negatives left behind. Two years after her death, Chicago-based real estate agent and garage-sale enthusiast, John Maloof, stumbled upon her work at an auction in 2007. Maloof and other collectors pursued the remainder of her photographs by tracking down her abandoned storage unit. From then, it was only a matter of time before her collection of frames shot in New York, Chicago, France, South America, and Asia between the nineteen-fifties and the nineteen-seventies rose to fame. 

Her photographs create an unscripted story of authentic life, as the people in her images go about their daily lives, hardly noticing Maier’s presence. I felt an intimate connection between the subjects of Maier’s films and myself, almost as if I could hear their voices, empathize with their cries, and feel their emotions. After understanding Maier's mannerisms as an obscure photographer, the elusiveness of her photographic practice no longer surprised me. The most obvious characteristics of her photography was the ambiguity of her presence, as if she tried to be as unnoticeable as possible. Her street photographs often depict individuals who very obviously do not notice her presence or her camera, and her discrete mannerisms are translated through the portraits she takes of individuals in the height of their emotions, nearly unaware of their photo being taken. Her incredibly candid images convey that she spent merely a split second in front of her subjects before disappearing away into the crowds of the city. 

The street is where everything happens, and Maier’s photographs enlighten me on this simple truth through the vivacious compositions of her street photographs. Maier favored the working-class neighborhoods of 1950s-1960s New York and Chicago, where she roamed the streets tirelessly and observed life in fractions of seconds through her camera. I viewed each anonymous individual captured on her film as the protagonist of their own motion picture within her images. Each one of Maier’s street scenes displayed ordinary people fulfilling roles of specific characters, as if the street was their stage. I interpreted her street photographs as narrations of social life in its purest form. 

I was especially captivated by Maier’s scene captured on September 28, 1959, on 108th street in New York City, shown above. What struck me about this photo specifically was Maier’s brilliant intention to tell multiple narratives with one photograph through the various subjects captured in her photograph. Each character in this scene tells a powerful story of their own, and simply by studying each individual’s stance, facial expression, and location on the street, I was brought into the world of each of their lives. Moreover, the symbol of humans living their own lives, focused primarily on themselves, is conveyed through the spatial orientation of the individuals in this frame: they each have their section where they are existing in the present moment, forever, and do not seem to notice each other's presence. The isolation of each character creates an optical illusion of frames within a frame despite their proximity to each other. An exception to this observation is the older gentleman standing farthest to the left, as he seems to be admiring the younger children playing with the tire. This interaction between the oldest and youngest characters in Maier’s narrative can be interpreted as an appreciation for the admiration of youth.

As humans grow older, they begin to understand and admire youth from a perspective of fascination, and they are in awe of a young child’s spark for life and carefree energy, following their curiosity to a rubber tire, and finding the happiest entertainment in such a simple, found object. Furthermore, his gaze towards the younger children brings the image together as a whole, as we move our eyes across the photo, examining each individual’s life, ending on the eldest man, but following his stare towards the beginning again. This in itself, one could argue, communicates the simplicity of the cycle of life. 

Maier’s ability to provoke the constant movement of life in her photos made me feel more impacted by her art in a new, more vivid way. When I first laid my eyes on her photo depicting children playing in the snow, I was immediately fascinated by how her photography seemed to be moving. As seen in the photo to the right, a tiny frame is created with the window panel, and the children’s drawings are taped to the window itself. Within this frame, there are four characters: three children playing in the snow outside and one lifeless child posted to the window. I could almost see the children struggling to run through knee-deep white powder and could hear each cry of happiness and laughter through the glass from where Maier was viewing this precious scene. I was particularly impressed by Maier’s use of the contrast between alive and inanimate human figures. The positioning of the playing children adjacent

to the paper elf on the window creates the illusion of constant motion in this photo and brings the three outdoor children to life in a new way.

Moreover, while the window allows us to see a beautiful story of children playing with each other, most likely during the holiday season, it also tells the story of the room where Vivian Maier is standing. The room from which the window looks out seems to be a pleasant place, filled with youthful life, where children are encouraged to express their creativity on paper, and paste to a window for the world to admire. I think it was probably the kitchen of the house In Chicago where Maier nannied three young boys like her own children. Moreover, from this image, we can understand even more about Maier herself: she encouraged creativity and emotional expression and celebrated the artwork of her three young boys.  

The final section of her exhibition showcased her photographs in color, paralleling the timing of her color experimentation being the last stage of her photographic practice. Here, I also observed her shift in focus, away from people and towards random, found objects. Her photos of lonely newspapers, mugs half full of stale coffee, and wet leaves pasted to the sidewalk made me think that these were the only objects left on the planet. Her more abstract and colorful photography phase leaves the impression that she studied the complicated relationship between humanity and the rest of the world and the remains we leave behind after moving on to the next thing.

Visiting the Vivian Maier exhibition was very impactful for me as a young photographer. As an unknown brilliant street photographer, Maier’s work and life taught me to always shoot for myself and never for others. Maier roamed the city's streets tirelessly solely for herself because she genuinely enjoyed capturing human expression and creating narratives with a split second in time. Without the pressure to publish her work and please other eyes, Maier produced the most beautiful and unique films by enjoying her photographic practice as nothing more than a simple hobby. Maier’s photos inspire me, and I hope to adapt Maier's attitude and energy into my own street photographic practice.